Education Leaders Cite Strengths and Weaknesses of Newly Released Education Report

LANSING – A report being released today weighs in on how the authors believe the state’s education system can be improved for the benefit of public school students.

“The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) agrees with some findings in the report and disagrees with others,” said State Superintendent Dr. Michael F. Rice. “The report offers no significant new research or fresh insight about knowledge, education policy, or ways to improve student achievement.”

The report reviews authority within state government and across levels of government, district and service consolidation, school choice, and school finance.

Authority:

The report recommends providing more authority to the governor to reshape K-12 education policy and restructure the State Board of Education, actions that MDE and the board oppose and that “will likely require changes in state statute and the Michigan Constitution,” in the words of the authors. Even in making this recommendation, the report says, “Quantitative research provides limited guidance on the question of whether strong gubernatorial control (i.e., the appointment of the state superintendent or the State Board of Education) results in higher student performance.”

At its April 8, 2025, board meeting, the State Board of Education voted unanimously to approve a resolution offered by State Board Member Tom McMillin to oppose the idea of having the governor appoint the state superintendent. Mr. McMillin noted: “The architects of the last approved State Constitution recognized that too much power in one state executive, the governor, at any given moment, would be harmful. This remains the case. Too much authority and influence vested in any one political actor creates a situation where short-term political gain could too easily be placed above the best interests of students."

The report also recommends increasing MDE’s capacity to support locally controlled school districts, including by having the legislature provide more resources and staffing for the department, and restructuring regional educational service agencies, also known as intermediate school districts (ISDs), so they can play a larger role in the education system. MDE agrees that the department needs more staffing, the absence of which is an impediment to its support of public schools across the state. “MDE staff are small in number, but disproportionate in their impact given their numbers,” Dr. Rice said. “MDE is able to provide local schools with a great deal of support despite having 1% of the state’s full-time equivalent staff (approximately 500 staff members) and 0.2% of the state’s budget to oversee close to 25% of the state’s budget every year.”

The report also notes the importance of rethinking the relationships between MDE and ISDs and those between ISDs and local school districts. Any changes in authority among MDE, ISDs, and local districts to strengthen the connections among the three levels are worthy of consideration but would require changes in law.

Relatedly, the report says Michigan should develop and carry out a coordinated and well-funded state-level approach to improve achievement in key areas such as early literacy and early numeracy. These efforts, which require changes to state law, have already begun in Michigan on early literacy, following passage of October 2024 state laws endorsed by MDE that will strengthen the effectiveness of literacy pre-service, in-service, assessments, dyslexia screeners, instruction, coaching, and intervention for Michigan students and staff. MDE is advocating for further improvements and additional funding to improve literacy achievement.

District and Service Consolidation:

The report recommends support from ISDs for local districts to share services. ISDs are already very helpful to local school districts in myriad ways, from financial support in payroll, accounting, budgeting, and purchasing to professional and curriculum development, among others. ISDs help small school districts with diseconomies of scale cobble together staffing and other resources to operate with economies of scale or, minimally, far more efficiently than they might otherwise be able to do.

The legislature has funded, and the governor has signed into law, grants that MDE has provided districts and regional consortia to share services in areas such as technology so that schools can devote more of their resources to instruction.

School Choice:

The report advises the state to “focus on charter school quality rather than quantity.” MDE believes that the report could have helped in this regard had it focused more on ways that the state legislature could strengthen oversight of the quality, financial oversight, and efficient placement and use of charter schools in the state. “In Michigan, we have among the largest number of local school districts in the country, with the addition of almost 300 charter schools in the last three decades,” Dr. Rice said. “Choice in public schools is important, but unfortunately, given the absence of statutory authority granted by the state legislature to oversee charter school placement and proliferation, the number of charter schools has grown well beyond student and parent need. At some point, more charter schools simply spread resources more thinly.”

Finance:

The report advises the state to follow recommendations in a series of studies by the School Finance Resource Collaborative, which has concluded that Michigan underfunds schools by billions of dollars annually despite significant funding increases approved by the legislature the last few years and signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. MDE and the State Board of Education have supported and continue to support the collaborative’s recommendations.

The University of Michigan report advises the legislature to reduce the administrative burden associated with categorical funding, which requires districts and MDE to devote significant resources to applying for dollars for specific purposes and compliance with requirements of the funding. MDE agrees that categorical funding is overused but believes in some cases it serves a useful purpose by providing funding dedicated to important statewide priorities such as addressing the teacher shortage; children’s mental health and school safety; the support of economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, English learners, and rural/isolated district students; general education transportation reimbursement; and school infrastructure for communities whose tax base doesn’t permit full funding of basic infrastructure.

The report also recommends that the state invest in teachers. That includes strategies to attract and retain teachers, particularly in urban and rural districts, which is something MDE and the State Board of Education have advocated with Goal 7 in Michigan’s Top 10 Strategic Education Plan, to increase the numbers of certified teachers in areas of shortage. MDE and the State Board of Education worked with the governor and the state legislature to fund more than $1.1 billion of teacher shortage rectification measures in the last three fiscal years, recommendations largely from the department.

State Board of Education President Dr. Pamela Pugh believes that the report’s opinion-based governance recommendations risk undermining Michigan’s constitutional safeguards. “It is troubling that the report leans on opinion over data, especially when recommending governance changes that disregard the will of the people and the constitutional safeguards established in 1963. Governors already have a voice in the process, and we would welcome even more active engagement through gubernatorial board liaisons. But at a time when public education is under attack, we must remain steadfast in protecting the independence of those entrusted to lead our schools and serve all children—not political agendas.”

While some report recommendations align with goals of the Top 10 Strategic Education Plan, State Board of Education members have raised concerns in the past and with this report about governance proposals that lack empirical grounding, including proposals that have no statistically significant support in regression analysis. Governors already have influence in the superintendent selection process through party nominations of State Board of Education members, serve as ex officio members of the State Board, and can engage through liaisons at the board table.

The legislature appropriated $500,000 in the fiscal year 2024 budget for the report. From four proposals, MDE selected Dr. Brian Jacob of the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab, who led the report writing. As the report notes: “Results represent the analysis, information and opinions of the authors and are not endorsed by, nor do they reflect the views or positions of grantors, MDE, CEPI (the Center for Educational Performance and Information that collects and reports education data in Michigan) or any employee thereof.”